The HarvardX MOOC "Lessons from Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic" went live December 3rd, 2015. The course offers four modules, and will be available for nine weeks. Enrollment is still open and students can explore content and earn an honors certificate up until the course ends on February 4, 2016. Rapid registration has led to over 4,000 people enrolled from over 150 countries in 6 continents.

"The Ebola crisis offers a cautionary template of the types of pandemics we are likely to see in the future of our global society," said Ashish Jha, Director, Harvard Global Health Institute and course instructor. "This course provides an opportunity for our current and future healthcare professionals, policymakers and leaders to look at how we might contain the spread of contagious diseases in the future, or better yet, prevent them altogether through better health systems and more cohesive international healthcare policies."

Content provided by Elsevier includes research papers published by The Lancet;The Lancet Infectious Diseases; Epidemics; Public Health (the official journal of the Royal Society for Public Health); Acta Tropica and other selected titles.

They cover a broad range and depth of topics including: surveillance and response of contagious disease, rapid response, global health governance, policies and leadership, vaccine development, protection of healthcare workers in areas of contagion, funding for health and medical programs, as well as pandemic preparedness, among others.

"The Ebola virus outbreak alerted governments to persistent weaknesses in global health security," said Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet. "The research and analysis we have published points out these failures and call for urgent action to repair the systems for health protection in all countries. Unfortunately, there is no sign yet that the lessons of Ebola have been fully learned."

Both Elsevier and Harvard are pleased to see the global diversity of registrants. "The MOOC provides a terrific opportunity for us to learn more about where in the world the crisis is being studied," noted Ann Gabriel, Elsevier's Vice President for Research and Academic Relations. "We have moved beyond publishing the panel report to supporting a program with global reach."

Medical and public health students and those currently in health-related fields may learn more about "Lessons from Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic" and register for the course here.

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence, and ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com.